Muslim immigrants have had a difficult time assimilating in some European countries and this certainly isn’t going to help. I understand and am in favor of some of the rules that some European governments have had to impose, like the one saying you have to actually show your face on your identification card so the government can actually identify you. Call me crazy, but if your face isn’t showing, it’s not a useful means of identification.

But when it gets to the point where you ban an article of clothing for women, one that has important religious meaning, because you’re afraid that male terrorists could wear them and move about unknown, I almost don’t know what to say. It makes me want to get up on my soapbox and do my best Keith Olbermann impression: “How DARE you, sir! Have you no SHAME?”

After 9/11 when Muslim groups like CAIR were saying that it was unfair that more Muslims were screened in airport security, I was admittedly not very sympathetic to their concerns. I have always said that if white, blue-eyed, blonde males ages 30-40 were bombing train stations, then I would have no problem going through extra security when I went to board a train. I would be mad at the people who were doing the bombing, who were tarnishing my image, not at the people who had to put me through greater security to ensure I was not one of the bad guys. I would be sympathetic to the government and understanding of their need for hightened scrutiny of people who looked like me.

But I think this goes too far. If this law passes, it’s going to set back relations with the Muslim community in Belgium, without question. Perhaps that’s part of the agenda here: make them feel unwanted and maybe they’ll leave and some other country can worry about them instead. I wish I weren’t so cynical, but it’s hard not to be at a time like this.

I know European countries do not appreciate rights and freedoms to the extent that we do. Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Austria, for example. Some will say that this kind of thing could never happen in this country. I would hope that is true. But we live in an age where many on the political left look to Europe for guidance; where some Supreme Court justices pay more attention to European law than the U.S. Constitution, for example. At the same time, some on the right would say that in the name of a war that may potentially last forever, we should be able to infringe on individual rights granted to us in the Constitution.

Let this example from Belgium shatter the myth forever that a more European society, with a stronger government presence and fewer civil liberties, is something to which America should aspire.

Those that study how earthquakes affect physical structures have a saying: earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do. The devastation in Haiti is a result of two things: lack of economic development and hurricanes. Hurricanes wreak havoc on Haiti frequently, so structures are made with very heavy roofs. Lack of economic development means that Haiti’s brick structures, including walls, are made without reinforcing steel bars (rebar). They are made with more sand and less concrete. A earthquake that would just crack an American wall will take down a Haitian one. That’s not jingoism — it’s science. Heavy roofs + weak walls + earthquakes = disaster.

The Obama administration has pledged $100 million to Haiti. This is a paltry sum — the NBC late night disaster was recently reported to cost NBC about $200 million — but it’s still $100 million too much. It is not the federal goverment’s responsibility to provide money to people in other countries. Our founders had a problem even with using federal resources to help individual states, let alone other countries. That’s the U.N.’s job.

Our government has the ability to help in many ways and marshall many assets that the private sector simply cannot: coast guard ships and helicopters, for example. But giving money is not their job. It is the responsibility of every citizen across this great country to give what they can. Most of the funds to help the people of Haiti will come from charity — private citizens and firms, as it used to be done. As it was done after the great fire in Chicago. As it was done after the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. But when you set the precedent that after every natural disaster the federal government will provide not just emergency disaster relief but long-term financial relief, it’s hard to draw the line.

Watching football this weekend, I was impressed at the speed with which we have set up campaigns to help the Haitian people. I am also impressed by our ability to use technology for this – text the word “Haiti” to 90999 and a charitable donation of $10 will be made to the Red Cross and you can pay for it on your next mobile phone bill. Amazing. I’m confident that the Red Cross will raise more for Haiti than was raised for tsunami relief a few years ago, but I wonder how much will be a result of the devastation itself or the proximity of Haiti to the US, and how much will be because it’s just so much easier for people to donate this time around.

I encourage you to do what I’m going to do and cut back on some spending this next week or two and make a little donation to the Red Cross. You can bring lunch to school instead of buying it, or buy regular coffee instead of a fancy mocha. A lot of us have already started doing those things because of the recession, but there are still other ways we can all save money if we need to.

We are the greatest, most generous country on the planet. People in other countries call us empirialistic, hegemonic, warmongering, rude Americans…and then tragedy strikes and they desperately plead for us to help them. Let us not let those pleas go unheard. Let’s show that the American people and the American government are not the same thing. Let’s show that we do not need the government to provide everything for us, and that private charities can do a much better job of raising funds and delivering help to people who need it than some bureaucrat in Washington ever could.

When the semester began, administration e-mailed faculty and told us that due to H1N1 fears, they were advising students to stay home if they felt sick. They told us that we could not require notes from doctors, as that would give students a disincentive to stay home if they felt sick but couldn’t get to a doctor. This basically gives students a get-out-of-jail-free card in case they haven’t studied for an exam. There’s no doubt that some students will take advantage of it, so some (including me) were a bit annoyed by the policy. It means that many of us will have to write another version of an exam and hope that students aren’t playing us for suckers. But I understand the issues at play and the administration’s concern about the flu, and I realize there’s no perfect solution here. Their primary concern is limiting the spread of the flu, and everything else comes second.

Fortunately, I don’t have H1N1 — my temperature has been about 2 degrees below normal, the opposite effect of H1N1. But I decided that it was better to be safe and cancel class today and stay home in bed. I didn’t want to give anybody what I have, and with my immune system compromised, I didn’t really want to risk catching the flu from someone at school. I was hoping that I could rest up and get better but that didn’t happen today. So I’ll stay in bed tomorrow, catch up on Maury (“You are… NOT the father!” ), and hopefully turn the corner on this thing so I can at least go to my classes on Wednesday.

And yes, I’m drinking lots of orange juice, Mom.

I’m not even sure why Bernie Sanders shows up on Fox News if he’s going to act like he did in today’s interview with Megyn Kelly. He’s listed as an Independent but is a self-proclaimed Socialist, as is abundantly clear in this interview. Here’s a link to the video from Fox. Normally I would just include some parts of this interview, but I did the whole thing here because Fox’s “automatically generated transcript” on the web page linked above is junk. They warn that it “may not be 100% accurate.” But when ”fair tax system”  in the interview becomes “theft tax Muslim” in the transcript, the transcript is worthless.

To make it interesting, I’m keeping track of the lies, non-answers, and evasive answers Sanders gives in the interview.

To start off, Kelly plays a clip of the Director of the (non-partisan) Congressional Budget Office stating that the federal responsibility for health care costs will increase if any of the new proposed health care bills pass, despite claims by some Democrats that it will actually bring costs down.

Kelly: The Washington Post calls that a “devastating assessment” for the Democrats who want to overhaul health care. How do you respond, sir?

Sanders: Well, I respond in a couple of ways. I think the CBO does not necessarily (and by definition cannot) take into its calculations the role of disease prevention. We spend a huge amount of money treating chronic disease. We do not do a good job in keeping people healthy. And the effort so far in Congress is to try to do that, and it’s hard to calculate what that will be.

Also, we have a disaster in terms of primary health care, Megyn. We have 60 million Americans who have no doctor at all right now. They end up in the emergency room. They end up in hospital much sicker than they should have been. This legislation puts a great deal of emphasis in getting more doctors out into primary health care and I think we save substantial sums of money in that area as well. And it’s hard to calculate what that will mean in the future.

But the last point that I would make in terms of where I think the CBO Director makes a point. Right now, as a nation, as you know, we spend twice as much — almost twice as much — as any other country on earth in terms of our per capita cost of health care. Why is that? Why do the French in general — they’ve generally got a better system than we do — spending half of what we do? And the answer is that they have, as most countries around the world, industrialized countries, have a single-payer Medicare program for all, which eliminates in our country some $400 billion in waste and inefficiencies, in bureaucracies, that occur when we have 1,300 private health insurance, thousands of different health care programs, millions of bureaucrats.

Some of Sanders’ points have validity. If we reduce health care costs by reducing chronic disease, that’s great. But the CBO report does in fact consider the impact of preventative health care. It’s just that the people pushing the health care bills, like Dick Durbin, think it  has underestimated those savings. (Note in the link Christopher Dodd also admits the bill won’t actually decrease costs; he says it will “bend the curve” and slow the rate of growth of costs — those are two entirely different things.) So that’s the first lie for Sanders: he says the CBO doesn’t consider the savings at all, when in fact they do make an effort to account for them. His second lie is that we spend almost twice as much as any other country. We’re at 15% and there are 6 other countries over 10%. We spend about 40% more than the number two country, Switzerland. Facts, shmacts, eh Bernie?

Score: Lies: 2, Non-answers: 0, Evasive Answers: 0

Kelly: Alright, but let me just steer you back on point, Senator, because I know — just for now, anyway, for now I know we’re not talking about one universal health care system that’s being proposed, although many people think that’s where the President wants to take us. I know you’ve said in the past that’s where you think we should be. Despite your criticism of the CBO, they have said — I mean, this is their job, is to crunch the numbers — they’re the ones who said it’s going to cost about a trillion dollars. Now they come out and say this whole thing, not only is it not going to help these skyrocketing costs in the health care system, but it’s going to make them worse, and suggesting that the financial crisis we are in right now is going to be worsened by all of these plans that the Democrats are proposing on Capital Hill. [Note: the "financial crisis" of which she speaks is the federal budget deficit specifically, not the larger economy as a whole.]

Sanders: Well, two responses, Megyn. Again, I think that the nature of the CBO is not to be able, because it’s very difficult… I mean, if we have, we allow people to go to the doctor before they get very sick and end up in the hospital, could you make a prediction of what kind of savings that would incur? But the second point that we have to address is, what happens if we do nothing? If we continue the disaster by which 46 million Americans have no health insurance and costs go up 10, 15, 20% every year? What studies tell us is that in 10 years, the average American will be paying double what he or she is paying today. Is that sustainable? And the answer, it’s not.

Note that Sanders is now saying that it’s impossible to account for the savings we’ll get by improving patient care and reducing chronic health problems. He already implied that we would save a lot of money, but now he says it’s impossible to know how much. So if you don’t know how much, how do you know that the decrease in spending on chronic care is going to offset the increase in other costs? Does Sanders make any effort to estimate the savings that might result? No, he doesn’t. The CBO actually did, whether Sanders acknowledges it or not. He argues that it’s impossible to get an accurate number without addressing the methodology they used at all. We learn quickly in economics that if you think a model is incorrect, your responsibility is to put forth a better model. Sanders doesn’t even try that here.

Kelly: I think there’s some debate on those numbers, Senator, because I know that that’s the number from the administration: 46-47 million Americans uninsured. But that includes illegals, who will not be covered by this bill, 11 or 12 million of them. That also includes people who have just chosen not to insure themselves because the so-called “invincibles,” people in their 20’s and so on.

Sanders: That may be, but those people…

Kelly: But listen, I want to get to this other point before we run out of time, and that’s this tax hike that’s been proposed by the House, that would now place the so-called high earners, the so-called wealthy, in a tax bracket that is really astronomical, Senator. We’re talking about people, in New York City for example, who would be facing almost 60% of their income going away in taxes.

First, Kelly reduces her credibility as an objective journalist here by throwing in the term “so-called” in front of high earners and wealthy. This plan would impact the top 1% of earners. They’re not the “so-called” high-earners — they’re wealthy, plain and simple. In muddying that, she does a disservice to herself. Second, Kelly is making the argument based on federal income tax, the new health care surtax, state income taxes and city income taxes. But she makes a mistake here by saying that “60% of their income” would go away. She should have said that it was the marginal rate on additional income (above a half million or a million dollars, depending on the bill). The rate at lower levels is obviously lower, so the percentage of the income paid in taxes would be less than 60%. Unless you include sales taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, alcohol taxes, cell phone taxes, cigarette taxes, cable television taxes… come to think of it, Megyn might be close on this one after all.

Sanders: And who are those people? Those are the people, Megyn, those may be the people at Goldman Sachs who just got their compensation at seven hundred…

Kelly: No, sir. It’s not just the Goldman Sachs people.

Sanders: No, well, I don’t agree with you.

In Bernie Sanders’ world, all rich people are Wall Street bankers. You just heard him say it. I have to create a new statistic for this.

Score: Lies: 2, Non-answers: 0, Evasive Answers: 0, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Kelly: Oh, yes it is.

Sanders: It’s a graduated, it’s a graduated tax.

Now Sanders is reminding Megyn that this is about marginal tax rates, but that has nothing to do with the point at hand which was about who these people are. He’s trying to change the subject, which I’m not keeping track of, but that’s also a cheap debate tactic. Megyn’s not having any of it, and continues.

Kelly: Listen, don’t take my word for it. Take Steve Forbes’ word for it, who was just on our air about two hours ago explaining how these are small business owners.

Sanders: Well, I might not take Steve Forbes’ word for it either. But the bottom line is, if you look at what’s going on right now, our friends in Wall Street who caused the most significant financial crisis since the Great Depression are now being paid $700,000 a year after being bailed out by the taxpayers of this country.

Megyn: Sir, it’s easy to blame the Wall Street fatcats, but I’m talking about — you know that it’s not all Wall Street fatcats that are going to get hit by this. People who are making $500,000 a year include small business who get taxed as individuals, and they are saying jobs are gonna go away.

Sanders: Well, what I am saying is that if we do not do something, whatever it may be, you’re gonna see a doubling of health care costs, which will be destructive to small businesses and every American. We’ve got to do something. To the degree we have to pay for it, it should not be the middle class, but upper-income people.

Score: Lies: 2, Non-answers: 0, Evasive Answers: 1, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Sanders avoids the Wall Street fatcats question by saying basically, “Well, we have to do something.” Now at this point, if you’ve been reading my blog faithfully, you should know my head is about to explode. I wrote about this back in February: using the “we have to do something” excuse to justify a program regardless of how bad it might be. That led us to the ARRA (aka the Stimulus bill), which we all can see now is not really a stimulus bill at all — which is why unemployment is still rising. And one more reason I love Megyn Kelly: she can read my mind.

Kelly: Something! So now we’re on the same page about something. So let’s accept that something must be done. The question is whether taxing…

Sanders: Well, the Republican party does not accept that, by the way.

First, he’s rude and interrupting her here. Second, he’s lying again. All this “Republicans don’t suggest anything” nonsense is getting old. Democrats come out with a plan. Republicans counter with something else. Then Democrats ignore the plan and say “Republicans don’t have any alternatives.” Just because you don’t like an alternate plan does not mean it’s not a plan.

Score: Lies: 3, Non-answers: 0, Evasive Answers: 1, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Kelly: …whether more taxing. Let me finish my question. The question is whether more taxes, in a recession in particular, on the people who create jobs is the answer, as your colleague in the House, Nancy Pelosi, thinks.

Sanders: If you don’t do anything about health care and costs double in 10 years, that will be destructive not only to people but to the economy as well. The top 1% today earn more income than the bottom 50. I am not going to raise taxes on the middle class or working families. Our friends on Wall Street can in fact afford to pay more in taxes.

In case you’re wondering, Sanders’ statistic is actually true. The top 1% of income tax returns account for 22% of total income, while the bottom 50% only account for 12% of total income. However, this part of the interview is about taxes and how much the rich can afford to pay, so here are some more facts: the top 1% of income tax returns paid 40% of the income taxes, while the bottom 50% paid just 3%. The average tax rate paid by the bottom 50% is 3% of income, while the average tax rate paid by the top 1% is 23%. The rich pay a lot in taxes, but the question is: how much would Sanders have them pay?

Kelly: It’s not just Wall Street, sir. At what point do you draw the line? 70% income tax okay with you? 80% income tax okay with you?

Sanders: Well, as you know, under Bush the taxes for the very wealthy went substantially down and the gap between the rich and everybody else grew wider.

Score: Lies: 3, Non-answers: 1, Evasive Answers: 1, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Kelly: Well, but you’re fixing that.

Sanders: I do not stay up nights worrying for our friends on Wall Street, as some people may.

Kelly: But really, I’m wondering, where do you draw the line? Does 60% not shock the conscience?

Sanders: Well that’s, we can discuss… Well, again, Bush lowered taxes to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars for the top 1%.

Score: Lies: 3, Non-answers: 2, Evasive Answers: 1, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Kelly: But answer my question. Does 60% not shock the conscience?

Sanders: Well, next time around we can talk about a fair tax system. How’s that?

Score: Lies: 3, Non-answers: 3, Evasive Answers: 1, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Kelly: No, no. This is, sir, you’re about to have to vote on this. This thing may pass in the House. It’s gonna come over to you in the Senate…

Sanders: (interrupting yet again) If you’re asking me if I will vote…

Kelly: …and I’m asking you if this is okay with you.

Sanders: Well, it certainly is okay for me to tell my friends on Wall Street who just got a bonus of $600,000 they’re gonna pay more in taxes so that we can lower health care costs in America. Yeah, that’s okay with me.

Something tells me he doesn’t really have friends on Wall Street. If he does, he might not after this interview.

Kelly: So you want our viewers to believe that everybody who is going to be affected is a Wall Street fatcat.

Sanders: I want your viewers to believe that if we do nothing right now, this country’s gonna be in very serious trouble.

Score: Lies: 3, Non-answers: 3, Evasive Answers: 2, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Kelly: Okay, but sir, you’re not answering my question.

Sanders: Well, I did my best.

Score: Lies: 4, Non-answers: 3, Evasive Answers: 2, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Yes, I scored that one as a lie. If this is truly his best, he’s too stupid to be a U.S. Senator. (Or maybe not – we did just get Al Franken.) Regardless, I choose to believe that he’s lying about giving his best.

Kelly: You and I both know it’s not all Wall Street fatcats. You won’t answer the question about how much is too much. You know, our viewers want answers to these questions, sir.

Sanders: Well, I will answer the question. When the top 1% earn more than the bottom 50%, I’m not gonna ask the bottom 50% to pay more.

Score: Lies: 4, Non-answers: 3, Evasive Answers: 3, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

No, Senator, you did not answer the question. Maybe some of the people who vote for you are too stupid to know when you’re answering a different question than the one you were actually asked, but some of us are not.

Kelly: All right. So I guess 60, 70, 80% is all right for now.

Sanders: No, that’s not what I said, Megyn. Don’t put words in my mouth.

Kelly: Well, you won’t answer one way or the other, sir, so I can only assume the answer’s yes.

Beautiful work, Megyn. He actually thinks that not answering the question when it was asked 3 times means we don’t know what he really thinks. At this point, I don’t know if Sanders is an idiot or if he just thinks everyone watching the interview is.

Sanders: Well, we’re gonna go after the top 1 or 2%. I think that that’s appropriate if we need to raise revenue rather than going after the middle class.

Score: Lies: 4, Non-answers: 4, Evasive Answers: 3, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

I do love his use of the phrase “go after” here. It is so revealing.

Kelly: Alright. Senator Bernie Sanders, thanks for coming on.  We appreciate you being here.

Sanders: Thank you.

There you have it. In a 7-minute interview, Bernie Sanders either lies, evades a question, or simply doesn’t answer a straightforward question a total of 11 times. Shouldn’t we expect better from the people who represent us and are so willing to spend our money?

I am so sick of people debating dishonestly, which is what Sanders does here. Don’t like a question? Don’t answer it. Don’t have an answer for something, or think your true answer might shock the people who are watching? Don’t answer it, or change the subject and hope we’re too stupid to notice. Don’t like the results other people find in their study? Lie about their methodology, or say it’s impossible to know what the right answer is.

I see a lot of this happening now with the health care debate. People pick one statistic that helps their argument (U.S. pays more per capita than other countries), while ignoring another that hurts it (our cancer survival rates are better than practically every other country). When a statistic runs contrary to their position, they pick it apart and argue that it is not accurate. When the statistic supports their argument, they believe it is the gospel truth and don’t care to learn more about what’s behind it. For example, people who want health care reform often cite the statistic that our life expectancy is lower than other countries. It’s 100% true but totally misleading if your goal is discussing the efficacy of different health care systems. When you account for our rate of violent crime death and fatal accidents, our life expectancy is actually higher than almost every other country. This is because a larger percentage of our population dies due to crime than most other developed countries, and we drive more miles per person than any other country on the planet, so we have more fatal accidents. These people don’t die because of our health care system — if you get shot in the head or are in a head-on collision without a seatbelt, you’re going to die whether you’re in the U.S., Canada, or Cuba. Life expectancy depends on more than just the health care system, so it’s misleading to use that one statistic as a barometer for our entire health care system. Yet people do it all the time.

The sad part is that Sanders thinks he’s a brilliant man. He likely thinks he did great in that interview. But by not answering the questions he didn’t like, or trying so hard to change the topic, his true views are crystal clear. We’re not as stupid as you think we are, Bernie.

This has been a chance to try to figure out how my iPhone is going to work in Canada. It’s $.79 to make a call to another US number while in Canada, a little less to send a text, same price to receive a text. I can buy an international calling plan for $5/month, but that only reduces the cost per call to $.59, probably not worth it. The cheapest international data plan is $25, which seems like too much for me. I’ve downloaded some wi-fi spot-seeking applications so I can still access the internet and e-mail that way instead of through the 3G network. I’ll be in a foreign city trying to meet up with friends and colleagues at several different hotels, all while trying not to use my phone because I’m so cheap. Should be interesting.

I’m leaving my laptop at home for the first time in I can’t even remember how long. I’ve got my iPhone to stay in touch with people, and I’ve used 123Movies2Portable to burn a bunch of DVDs into a format that I can watch on the plane. I tried a bunch of free software out there to rip DVDs but nothing seemed to work, or wouldn’t convert copyrighted material. This program is a gem, and I recommend it highly.You can try it for one day for free to test drive it; if you like it, enter 15OFF in the coupon code at the software manufacturer’s website and save 15% when you decide to purchase. No, they haven’t paid me for their endorsement — I just think it’s a great product and worth every penny.

The goal is to try to forget about work and politics and economics for four days, and that means leaving my laptop at home. If you know me, you know that’s not an easy thing for me to do, so please wish me luck. I wish you all a great weekend with family and friends, however you end up spending it.

- Dave

The original story showed how some horses are sold for meat, taken to horse slaughterhouses here in America. They are first stunned, and then a nailgun is used to shoot a bolt into the center of its skull, killing them. However, since horses have longer necks than cows, they move around more and it’s harder to hit the target — multiple nails are often necessary, while the horse is injured from the first. And when that doesn’t work, they get strung up by their hind legs and gutted, exsanguinated while they are still alive. Seeing it is enough to make me eat a little less meat this week, that’s for sure.

The good news is that legislators cracked down on horse slaughterhouses and now there are no more of them operating in the United States. That was the end of the original story.

This revisit shows the unintended consequences of outlawing horse slaughter in the U.S.: many of the horses that would have been taken to an American slaughterhouse are now taken instead to either Mexico or Canada, where they don’t have the same animal rights legislation we have here. The result is that the horses suffer even worse deaths than they would have here. In Mexico, some have their spinal cords severed with a knife while still alive and with no anesthesia. In Canada, some are killed the old fashioned way: shot in the head with a rifle.

More and more racetracks are instituting their own laws, so that horse owners who sell to meat brokers can be banned from their tracks, removing the financial incentive to sell a horse to recoup a few hundred dollars. And there are new programs by individual stables and horse enthusiasts designed to rehabilitate former racehorses so they can be used as event horses or trail horses, with a new lease on life.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

These private measures taken by racetracks and other organizations is a step in the right direction. I don’t know what the most effective solution is. What I do know is that sometimes when you try to fix one problem by passing a law, you create an even worse one, and this is a prime example of that. My favorite example of this concept is not as graphic but perhaps more deadly. In the U.K., emergency room patients were waiting to see a doctor for 6 or even 8 hours and people were fed up with it. Lawmakers responded by passing a new law: a patient can not spend more than 4 hours between the time he or she steps foot in the emergency room until the time that patient receives medical attention. The intention was obvious; the result less so.

After the law was passed, when ambulance drivers got a call and picked up a patient in need of medical attention, but not in a life-or-death situation, they were told by the hospital to park on the street until they receive further notice. Then when the hospital knew it wouldn’t take more than 4 hours to see the patient, they gave the ambulance clearance to bring the patient in. So instead of sitting in an emergency room, patients sat in ambulances instead. The result was lots of ambulances parked outside hospitals with people in them not getting hospital treatment, and fewer ambulances and EMTs available to actually go and pick up anyone who might be in need of critical care.

There’s another example in today’s news. In an effort to protect people from credit card companies, the government is imposing major changes in the way they do business. The basic change is to reduce the variability of interest rates, which sounds like a great thing when interest rates are rising because of credit problems in the economy (as is the current situation). But when you go from a variable rate to a fixed rate, the fixed rate is usually higher when interest rates are expected to rise, and that’s what we’re seeing right now. The result is that most of us will see higher interest rates, less availability of credit, a reduction in the grace period that one receives before finance charges start, reductions in frequent flyer miles and other bonuses, and perhaps even a return to annual fees that most of us haven’t had to pay for over a decade. At a time when credit is vitally important, what Congress is doing right now is going to shrink the supply of credit. But don’t tell that to Congress — they’re trying to help fix a problem. If it creates an even worse problem, well, that just means they get to pass another law next year…

Note: this post includes a heavy dose of sarcasm. If you do not react well to sarcasm, please stop reading now.

In the U.S., women now make up 58% of all undergraduate students. At Florida Atlantic University, one of the largest public schools in the country, women made up 64% of the class of 2006, and were responsible for 75% of honors degrees and 79% of highest honors degrees. Other research has shown that women have higher GPAs than men.

There is only one logical conclusion to be drawn from these facts: men are being treated unfairly.

See, there’s a difference in outcomes between men and women, and one thing I’ve learned from being at a university long enough is that whenever there is a difference in outcomes between two groups of people, it must be because one group is being treated unfairly. The strange part of this is that another thing I’ve learned being at a university is that a faceless, omnipresent, oppressive white male power structure in this country is the cause of all unequal outcomes. That’s why I can’t understand this phenomenon. I’m not sure how or why they’ve done it, but those evil white males are behind their own inferior educational performance. I know it doesn’t seem to make sense, but it must be part of their diabolical master plan somehow. I have been an official member of the faceless, omnipresent, oppressive white male power structure since 1974, but I have missed the last few meetings, so I’m not caught up on the plans. I’ll have to read the minutes when I get a chance.

OK, let’s look at those numbers and see what we can infer from them. Perhaps women enroll in less challenging majors. That’s one possible explanation men like to imagine. Sorry, guys: research that controls for major choice finds that when you compare men and women in the same major, women tend to have better grades. Maybe women are smarter than men. The women in my classes seem to think that’s the answer. Or maybe women get special treatment from their professors, who are overwhelmingly male. Or maybe, just maybe, women work harder in school and take their education more seriously, while men tend to drink and party more. When I was co-coordinator of the Student Learning Center’s Economics Tutoring program at U.C. Berkeley, more than 2/3 of the students that came in for tutoring were women. Men tended to be more obstinant, perhaps more proud, and did not seek help nearly as often.

Any or all of the possible explanations offered above could factor into the GPA disparity. So to conclude that simply because the male GPA is lower than the female GPA, men are being treated unfairly, is a preposterous conclusion to make without further analysis. Yet that is exactly what is being done today by some women’s groups in the context of wage and income differences between men and women.

Today is National Pay Equity Day (NPED), and it is being celebrated by the Women’s Center here at SCSU. NPED is based on analysis that looks at the average annual earnings of full-time salaried employees, comparing men to women, and finds that the number for women is 78% of the number for men (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007). NPED is supposed to be the day at which a woman would start working in the year so that by the end of the year they have their 78% while men get their whole 100% because they have been working since January 1. Never mind the simple fact that 22% of the year would imply that NPED should start on March 21st, yet for some reason women have pushed it back to the end of April. I’m not sure if it’s because women never seem to be ready on time, or if it’s because they just have to be overly dramatic about everything.

This is from an e-mail sent out to the University community today from Emeritus Professor Dr. Lora Robinson:

On June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, making it illegal for employers to pay men and women different wages for the same work. At that time, women earned only 59 cents for every dollar earned by men. Despite the passage of the EPA more than 45 years ago, the average woman now earns 78 cents for every dollar earned by her male counterpart. With Equal Pay Day on Tuesday, April 28, now is the perfect time to urge your senators to support the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 182).

Notice the convenient switch here. The first sentence talks about making it illegal for employers to “pay men and women different wages for the same work.” Then in the third sentence, it says the average woman now earns 78 cents for every dollar earned by her male counterpart. That’s not comparing men and women doing “the same work” — that’s an average across all men and women, across all jobs. Those aren’t even remotely the same thing.

I’m not arguing with the 78% figure. That’s a fact. But it’s simply a statistic, with no explanation behind it whatsoever. Quoting that 78% and saying there’s a problem of unfairness is just as intellectually dishonest as it would be for me to quote the GPA difference and saying men are being treated unfairly in college. There are plenty of perfectly reasonable explanations for why some people earn higher income than others. One of them is “compensating differentials,” payments received for jobs that are dangerous or otherwise unsavory (think “Dirty Jobs”).

Men make up 94% of all workplace fatalities. Why isn’t there a National Fatality Equity Day? It would occur on December 9 each year. That would be the day that women started dying on jobs, while men have been dying all year long since January 1. There’s no NFED because men are willing to take riskier jobs than women, in industries like logging, mining and fishing, and they understand the gamble they are taking with their lives. Men trade that risk for higher pay and don’t seem to complain about unfairness when they are overrepresented in fatalities. That’s why there’s no National Fatality Equity Day. So why is it that when women make the opposite choice, trading lower pay for less risk, they complain about the unfairness of lower pay and have their own day to commemorate it?

Note: when I mentioned the disparity in workplace fatalities, the director of the Women’s Center at SCSU informed me that women really actually do want these risky jobs, but men shut them out. She suggested I rent the movie North Country to see more about this. Despite my huge, well-documented crush on Charlize Theron (I won’t see Monster because I don’t want that image in my head), this is not a convincing argument. I mean, if I’ve seen The Devil Wears Prada, that’s all the proof I need that women are all rich Manhattan fashion moguls, right? Newsflash: one movie is not the equivalent of national economic data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

If women choose different occupations and earn different wages, is that discrimination? If women choose to become English professors while men choose to become Accounting professors, and Accounting professors make more money than English professors because they have better opportunities in the private sector, is that unfair treatment of women? It seems to me the Women’s Center at SCSU would think so. The truth is we need to know why women are in different sectors before we judge either the process or the outcome as unfair. If women choose to be English professors instead of Accounting professors because they like books more than ledgers, then that is their choice and the wage difference is the cause of their own actions, so cries of ”unfair” ring hollow. If there is an evil male Accounting cabal keeping women out, because they’re going to make us use pink numbers for negative values instead of red numbers, then we can talk about discrimination and unfairness. But you can’t just observe differences in wages and conclude there is unfairness. If women choose to be in services instead of manufacturing because they like dealing with people more than machines, then that is their choice. But one should not expect equality of outcomes when the market values manufacturing and services differently. And even if outcomes are  not equal, inequality of outcomes does not necessitate that there is inequality of opportunity or an unfairness of process.

To study gender discrimination in labor markets properly, you have to first control for other economic factors that explain wage differences: relevant industry, experience, college degree, etc. And when you control for everything, research shows that the 78% number goes up to 95%. The study cited in the e-mail faculty received from the Women’s Center actually says this on page 18. Unfortunately, this very important fact doesn’t even make the 3-page Executive Summary of the report, which most people will probably read instead. It seems some women don’t want people to know that when you account for everything, the world is not as oppressive as they have been led to believe. And that’s why they still use the 78% number. (Note: I am aware there’s still a difference of 5%. Is that discrimination? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe women just don’t bargain enough for higher wages — as this study and others seem to suggest.)

I find it interesting that in other academic departments, when there are differences between people based on race or gender, we are told that we can’t just look at percentages. For example, if you look at incarceration rates by race and find one race represented disproportionately, you will likely be told that you cannot just use the incarceration rates – you have to account for institutional factors and a variety of other variables to explain away the simple percentages; the world is more complex, we are told, than just the simple percentage. And that is absolutely correct.  The same argument applies if you look at rates of out-of-wedlock birth, abortion, or any number of other things. Yet when doing precisely that kind of analysis weakens the argument the Women’s Center has about unfair treatment, they throw away all that complicated (and correct) analysis and resort to just quoting the simple 78% number. It’s intellectually dishonest — it’s eating your cake and having it too.

Speaking of cake, maybe you’ve been thinking: Dave, how is the Women’s Center celebrating this historic day in the fight for equality between men and women? Well, I’m glad you asked. They’re having a bake sale. That’s right, a bake sale. Men, throw out your antiquated stereotypes about women — they’re in the kitchen baking cookies! I think a more fitting way to stick it to the male power structure would be to get a spot on Atwood Mall grilling hot dogs. They could even cut them in half first…

Because of the spam, mostly from Russia (we introduce them to capitalism, and they use it to give us spam), I am changing the comment feature on my blog. Your comments will no longer show up immediately — they will have to be approved first. I apologize for the inconvenience this might cause, and I really do not want this to limit your interaction with me on this blog. Please trust that as long as you’re commenting on an article and not trying to sell something, your comments will be approved. I check my e-mail pretty frequently, so you shouldn’t have to wait long. Hopefully after I have it like this for a while, the spam will stop, then perhaps I can switch comment approval off, but we’ll cross that bridge if and when we get to it. (Note: another option is to make people set up an account and log in in order to comment. I don’t like that option, as it makes it harder for people with mobile devices, but if others think that’s a better way to go, I’m willing to listen.)

On another note, I apologize for not posting as frequently lately. Work has been hectic and I am also frustrated by the fact that most of what I have been writing about has been looking at issues from a critical and often rather negative perspective. I don’t like to think of myself as a negative person, but apparently that’s what’s been coming out here lately, and I don’t like it. I need to work on that… Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts.